After riding on a winning streak for the past two weeks, the women's hockey team took two losses this past weekend to Colby College (3-4) and the University of New Hampshire (1-7).
The losses dropped the Big Green to 11-11-1 overall this season.
The Big Green have been fighting a bitter battle with ECAC rival and defending champion UNH this season.
In the second game of 1997, Dartmouth fell to the Wildcats 2-3. Three weeks later, at the Concordia Tournament, the Big Green snagged the win by coming out on top in a post-regulation shoot-out.
Yesterday, UNH was back for revenge and the Wildcats just wouldn't let go of the momentum.
"We were going in against UNH as an underdog," Sarah Hood '98 said. "I don't know how. It just got out of hand."
Dartmouth's weakness in yesterday's game was shown by the shots on goal 30 for the Wildcats to only 15 for Dartmouth.
"Obviously that was a factor," Hood said. "You've got to shoot to score."
Wildcats's vet Carisa Zaban set the pace for her teammates, lighting the lamp just nine seconds into the game.
The Big Green held their opponents until the end of the period, when, with 37 seconds left on the clock, Regina Renner knocked in her team's second goal.
"That 18 minutes in between the two goals was the best we've played all year," Hood said.
Melisa Heitzman mirrored Zaban's swift movements at the beginning of the second. Her goal came just 21 seconds into the period.
She was followed by teammate Samantha Holmes three minutes later, who sent the puck past Dartmouth goalie Melissa Siegfried '96, giving UNH a four-point advantage.
Heitzman closed off UNH's second-period scoring with her second netter five minutes later.
Dartmouth's only successful shot came at 12:57 in the second. Sarah Halsell '99 and Michelyne Pinard '98 set up co-Captain Malaika Little '97 who knocked the puck in.
UNH, however, returned in the third to tally two more goals, finishing up with seven goals for the afternoon.
Siegfried denied 23 shots, while UNH's Alicia Roberts stopped 14 shots.
On Saturday, Colby's Meghan Sittler and Barb Gordon led their team to a 4-3 victory over the Green.
"Colby was so frustrating. We're a better team [as a whole] but they have two great players, Sittler and Gordon," Hood said. Sittler picked up a hat trick, while Gordon, who played on the U.S. National team this past summer, had three assists.
Dartmouth's Jessica Clark '98 gave the Big Green a head start at 9:24 in the first, but by the end of the period her goal had been matched by the White Mules.
The same was true of the second period. Co-Captain Amy Coelho '97 put away the first netter three minutes into the period. Sittler, however, tied up the score at 2-2.
Again, Dartmouth scored first in the third period, with Halsell's first goal of the weekend.
This time, however, Colby scored twice more, leaving them with the 4-3 win at the buzzer.
"They were a little more loose and a little more hungry," Hood said. "They just didn't quit ... We let ourselves think we were tired and other things we don't normally do."
Siegfried and Colby's Maria Polichronopolous each had 22 saves.
